


Whatever Happens Now

by WilmaKins



Series: Whatever Makes You Happy [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awesome James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Epilogue, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, M/M, One Shot, Prologue, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Steve Rogers Feels, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 04:05:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16360427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WilmaKins/pseuds/WilmaKins
Summary: The alien invasion has been thwarted, no one is feeding on Tony Stark's misery, and Steve and Tony have finally confessed their love for one another. That part, at least, is still wonderful.After that, of course, life goes on.And now that Tony has to go back to the real world, and Steve is left on the run with his team, there are plenty of things left to deal with.A direct sequel to Whatever Makes You Happy, and intended as a lead in to the still-in-planning full length sequel fic.





	Whatever Happens Now

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is specifically a bridge between Whatever Makes You Happy and the sequel proper, which I am still planning (so many ideas, nothing close to a coherent plot). But this is essentially where all the characters end up ahead of any future story. It probably won't make any sense at all if you haven't read the first work.
> 
> Many thanks for reading!

**Steve and Natasha**

 

Steve knew at a glance. Natasha was leaving.

 

He had bumped into her, entirely by chance, in the north lobby at three in the morning. He’d been wandering around the palace for six hours by then, ever since Tony had _–_ reluctantly – stopped kissing him and left. Before that, Steve had been so happy to have Tony at all that he’d not thought about anything else. And now… The joy and relief were still there. There had been plenty of wonderful memories and excited plans to distract him while he wandered. It’s just, that wasn’t all there was.  Tony was gone, and empty space he’d left already felt like a burn. Steve missed him so much after a few hours that he worried where there was left for him to go. And, without Tony there to consume his thoughts, he remembered all the damage there still was to deal with.

 

Like Natasha, for example.

 

Steve didn’t even see the rucksack slung over her shoulder, at first. But still, he could tell; she was on her way out of that palace, away from The Avengers, with no intention of returning. If he’d been asleep, as she’d clearly expected him to be, there wouldn’t even have been a goodbye.

 

That hurt, a little.

 

Nat stopped when she saw him, resigned. She let the rucksack slip off of her shoulder as she waited for whatever was going to happen. She looked exactly the same as she did when she was blowing bubbles in his face in that hospital corridor, the day before SHIELD collapsed.

 

Steve was sure, in an instant, that he couldn’t just let her go. He wasn’t sure whether he was mad at her, he wasn’t entirely sure he even liked her anymore – but he couldn’t just let her walk away.

 

“I don’t want you to leave, Natasha.” He told her, softly.

“It isn’t about you, Steve” But she spoke kindly, with a sad smile.

“Were you planning on leaving before all this happened, then?” Steve asked calmly. Nat sighed, and considered her answer.

 

“I get why you think I’m only out for myself. I guess I kinda thought it too, in a way. But, you know, I’ve never actually just been out for myself, my whole life.” She explained “I was born into a code. I was raised on an ideology, something I was supposed to be unquestioningly loyal to… and I only stopped being loyal to that when I found something else to be loyal to. And when that turned out to be HYDRA, I was loyal to the Avengers, and then I was loyal to you…” She softened slightly when she saw Steve wince at that. “And the trouble with that is… if every time you change your mind, you change your loyalties… then are you ever really loyal to anyone?”

“That’s up to you-” Steve started, but Nat shook her head, and silenced him.

“That’s not what I mean, Steve.” She told him “This isn’t me saying that I’m not built to be part of a team, or that I couldn’t be loyal. This is me saying… I don’t know what I am, right now. I’ve been trying to do this one thing all my life, just trying to find the right people to do it for. And maybe it’s time I did something else. Maybe I need to just be me, for once.”

“And you don’t think you can do that here?”

“You know I can’t” She shook her head “No offence, but I can’t deal with everyone else changing their minds while I’m trying to work out mine.”

 

Steve prickled a bit at that, still sensitive about all the implications that changing his mind would have. Still poised to defend himself. But a better question occurred to him before he could.

 

“Have you changed your mind, then?”

“The truth is, I’ve just been doing what I thought was right at the time. And, as it turns out, that’s been too much about what team I was on at the time…” She trailed off, with a frown, and then blinked it away “My point is… I never had an overall view to change, or I don’t know what it was. I have to be on my own to work that out.”

“T’Challa has asked us to stay for a few more weeks, at least until Shuri’s done waking Bucky up. You could at least stay until then.” Steve tried, mainly because he felt he should “We could drop you off somewhere more convenient than the middle of Wakanda.”

“I’ll be fine” She told him, raising an eyebrow, and Steve nodded, sadly. He couldn’t help wishing that things could be different. It would have been nice if everything really could have just been better now, if they could all have gone back to what they were before, or at least moved on together. But life isn’t simple. This was the reality now, and he would deal with it.

 

Steve’s last question was just for himself. Just because he wanted to know.

 

“Are you sorry about Tony?”

 

He saw her back straighten defensively, and she took a slow breath before she answered him. But she answered him.

“For Germany? Honestly, no.” She admitted “I still don’t think that was me doing something _to him_. I still don’t think you did as much wrong as you feel bad for, and I still don’t think I did a bad thing in backing you.” Steve could hear the heavy pause at the end of her sentence.

“But?”

“You know, Steve, there’s nothing worse that someone who gives up smoking and then immediately starts on about the cancer risk” She sighed, irritably, and Steve knew that wasn’t what she was going to say “Don’t be that guy. I get that you’ve changed your mind, and that’s fine. I even get you having a problem with me, now that you’re the shoulder Tony’s crying on about it. But don’t act like you can’t believe I don’t see it, when _you_ didn’t, before an alien slab showed you, like yesterday.”

 

It was the strangest thing… but hearing that made Steve feel better. Lighter. Freed from the responsibility of convincing her, maybe, or the question of how he _would_ maintain a relationship with her, now. He really didn’t know what it was. But, for whatever reason, that was all he needed to hear. He was just taking a moment to think of how he’d say goodbye to her, and then he would have let her go – she would have known that. She didn’t have to say anything else.

 

Steve had no idea whether she carried on talking for him or for herself.

 

“I do still feel bad, sometimes, for what I did to Tony when I first met him” She confessed, out of nowhere, and it took Steve a moment to work out what she meant. “Sometimes I think… I wouldn’t have done it, now. It doesn’t look the same as it did, now that Tony doesn’t.”

“Now that Tony doesn’t?”

“I thought I was going to investigate and analyse a potential threat. Sounded very… professional. Reasonable. And Tony looked exactly like a potential threat. Now I think… If Tony was dying now, I wouldn’t goad him, would I? And the rest of the Avengers wouldn’t let me. But it seemed okay then, when the founder of the Avengers was asking me to…” That thoughtful look had come over her face again. Then she met his eye. “Loyalties.” She shrugged.

“I’m sorry you’re leaving like this, after everything” Steve told her. And then he went to say that he was sorry he’d yelled at her…

 

But then he remembered – he wasn’t.

 

Whatever else Steve felt guilty for, and however badly he’d gone about it, Steve would always be glad he stood up for Tony. And Steve _was_ still angry Natasha for hurting Tony – even if it was messy, even if he felt conflicted over it, even if he _had_ done it himself. And, although it was a very unCaptain America-like thing to think, it did occur to him that it might be better for both of them if she left.

 

Which he immediately felt guilty for, but it didn’t matter. She was leaving any way.   

 

“It’s not such a bad way to go” She told him, with the same sad smile. “Good luck, Steve”

 

Steve walked her to the door and watched her until she’d disappeared from sight completely. A final act of chivalry before he left her to fend for herself.

 

There was still an instinct to follow her, to try to argue with her – to protect her from dangers that he knew she was more than a match for. To do what Captain America would do. But, now that he was thinking more clearly, it really did seem more reasonable to let her go. To accept that it wasn’t his choice in the first place, and that he wouldn’t be obliged to make _that_ one, even if it had been.

 

And, no doubt, he’d rethink that decision any number of times, and maybe one day he’d regret it.

 

But at least he’d made it for himself. That was a start.

 

**Rhodey and Tony**

 

As anticipated, Tony had fifty thousand things to do as soon as he stepped off of his plane. His phone actually felt heavier for all the messages flashing for his attention, and there was a stack of paperwork two feet high waiting for him on his desk.

 

But none of it was as important as talking to Rhodey.

 

And Tony had _a lot_ to explain. First, and most fun, Tony had to deliver the news that Rhodey would walk again. Then Tony had to explain that he wasn’t consumed by anger at Steve anymore – that he was, in fact, dating him now. And, by the way, he had to explain how the crisis in Wakanda had developed, and how all of this had happened in the first place.

 

Rhodey didn’t have much chance to get a word in edgeways. He just sat on Tony’s couch, his face flickering in surprise at the appropriate places, until Tony finally reached the end. Then Rhodey frowned, thoughtfully.

 

“…Kicked it’s head _off_?” He clarified, eventually.

“Clean off”

“Wow.”

“I know, right?” Tony shrugged, and Rhodey took another few seconds with that mental image.

 

Then a very familiar smile came over Rhodey’s face.

 

Tony had been looking at that exact smile for over twenty years. A mature smile, but not weary. A knowing smile that wasn’t judging. A smile reserved for very specific things that Tony did, that only Tony did, and that only Rhodey smiled at.

 

“And you’re _dating_ Steve?” He confirmed, narrowing his eyes just a little. Tony felt his cheeks warm with a pleasant sort of blush.

“…Yeah.” He nodded, and Rhodey’s smile broadened just a bit. “…What?”

“This would be the guy you lived with for a year, yeah? The guy from _literally_ the room downstairs? And you wait until he’s an international fugitive before you hook up with him?” He extended his arms, mock exasperated “Because, what, it’d have been too damn _easy_ , last year?”

“Yeah.” Tony accepted, with a grin “I don’t like to make things too simple…”

“Well, better late than never” Rhodey huffed, or tried to huff, except he was still smiling.

 

“Yeah?” Tony asked, his tone a bit more cautious now. He and Rhodey had had a few conversations about, as Rhodey preferred to call it, ‘the accident’. And Rhodey had never once said a word against Steve, or any of them. He had accepted what happened with grace and courage, like he did everything, and had never let it spill into hate or anger. But Tony was Rhodey’s closet friend, and Tony alone knew some of the pain it had caused him. The pain that he would never have gone through, if Steve hadn’t…  Tony didn’t _know_ that Rhodey didn’t hold Steve responsible, because, looking back, Tony had never given him the chance to comment on Steve either way. Steve was something Rhodey supported Tony over, not the other way around. For all he knew, Rhodey still thought of Steve as the man whose arrogance had permanently disabled him. Which Tony had to accept was fair, however madly in love he was right now. Rhodey had a right to resent Tony jumping into bed with Steve, after everything.

 

But he didn’t. Before he said a word, Tony knew he didn’t.

 

“Yeah.” Rhodey answered as though it should have been obvious “I mean, for one, you obviously love the guy, but also – let’s be real here, _none_ of this would have happened if you’d just manned up and kissed him earlier.” And Tony laughed, his blush deepening as he dropped his eyes “I think you two being together might benefit national security, I mean that.”

“…But it _did_ happen.” Tony pressed, raising his head to look at Rhodey again “And I’d understand if you didn’t want to celebrate this with confetti and glitter.”

“I don’t blame Steve for _this_ , Tony” Rhodey told him, gesturing to the high-tech braces on his legs. “Don’t get me wrong, I think he was an ass a whole bunch of times – but I can’t hold that against him, if I’m going to be best friends with _you_.” He shot Tony a sarcastic look. “ _This_ was an accident. I don’t blame Steve for it any more than I blame Sam or Vision – honestly, less than I blame Ross. And I like Steve. At least Steve never tried to stop you being Iron Man.”

 

Tony was surprised by the smile he felt at that. He’d not really thought about that, before. And it occurred to him in the same moment that Rhodey had never tried to stop him being Iron Man, either. He’d never tried to stop him being Tony Stark – Rhodey had always liked him for being exactly what he was. That’s what that familiar smile had always meant. That’s why Rhodey had seen and appreciated the same quality in Steve, why he wanted Tony to be with someone that _wouldn’t_ try to change him. And, yeah, Rhodey was a worrier. Rhodey had always had one hand on the back of Tony’s shirt, was always ready with the question or the contingency plan that Tony should have come up with for himself – like he was about to do right now, Tony could tell. But, whatever concern Rhodey was about to share, he was doing it because he loved Tony. Not because he judged him, not because he thought Tony was about to screw it up. It was because he was trying to keep Tony safe while he was being Tony, _not_ because he was trying to turn him into someone who would have been safer. That meant a lot.

 

Rhodey might not have spent much of the last twenty years telling Tony how wonderful he was – that wasn’t who they were. But he _had_ spent the last twenty years acting as though he thought Tony was wonderful. Suddenly, Tony wished he’d remembered that obvious fact months ago. Funny how he never recognised the things that would have made him feel better about himself, until he already did.

 

“Not that it’s any of my business,” Rhodey fussed, right on cue “But have you thought about _how_ you’re going to be with an international fugitive?”

“A bit” Tony lied. He’d _tried_ to think about the practicalities… but he’d actually spent most of the flight daydreaming about seeing Steve again, not thinking about how he’d get there.

“ _Without_ getting arrested or causing a constitutional crisis, I mean?”

“Moving the goal posts, now.” Tony deadpanned. Rhodey shot him an unamused look “But I’m not going to do anything until I _have_ worked it out. I promise” And he gave what he thought was the scouts honour salute – he’d been kicked out of the scouts after three weeks, so he couldn’t really remember. Either way, Rhodey seemed to relent. For now. He just smiled, like he really was happy for Tony, and then there was a moment of comfortable silence. The quiet only ever shared by true friends.

 

“So, you have any questions about next week?” Tony asked eventually, his tone more animated. Rhodey snorted a laugh. Tony had gone into so much detail about Shuri’s upcoming visit, and all of the ways she could possibly help him, and all of the amazing technology she had at her disposal, that there couldn’t possibly have been any more questions _ever_.

“No, I think I got it” He answered in a level voice, and Tony smiled at himself. And then Rhodey went on, in a warmer tone “Thank you, Tony.” Tony’s smile melted away.

“Ah, well, this one isn’t me” He sighed. If he’d been talking to anyone else he’d have deflected with a joke here, or pretended to be confident, or some other subtle defence. But as he was talking to Rhodey, he just outright said “I’m sorry I couldn’t fix this.”

Rhodey exhaled slowly, and leant forward as much as his brace would allow.

“I’d call you an idiot for saying that, but I kinda know how you feel” He admitted, “I kinda want to say that I’m sorry I couldn’t fix the thing with Steve – I’ve been wanting to say that for six months now. But I know that wasn’t mine to fix. Nothing I could do – except what I could do. And I could listen to you, and I could try to keep Ross off your back, and all that stuff. But I still don’t know if that actually helped, this time. I know I could have listened to for ten years, and it never would have fixed things. So, yeah, sometimes I felt like I wished I could have done more, I’m still sorry I couldn’t – but I know that’s stupid, so you know what? I’m still going to call you an idiot for saying that.”

“Right back at ya” Tony smiled. And then, after a beat “And it did help, for the record. It always does.”

“And it did help, just so you know, having you working away on leg braces night after night – even if I never use them.” Rhodey told him, seriously, and then carried on before it could get too saccharine “although I still don’t know how you managed to blow yourself up making leg braces. Twice.”

“The second time does not count as blowing myself up” Tony sighed, not for the first time. Rhodey raised his eyebrows, _yeah, whatever_. And then a thoughtful look crossed his face, deepening into a frown.

 

“…when you say, kicked it’s head _off…_ ”

**Vision and Wanda**

 

Vision had elected to stay in Wakanda for as long as Wanda and the team did. Everyone assumed he would. But then, everyone had naturally assumed that Vision would stay by Wanda’s side for as long as he was there – and he hadn’t. The day after Tony left, Vision had given Wanda space. He’d left her to stare into the middle distance, sporadically tearful, until late into that night. And, because everyone thought it was Visions place to comfort her, they’d subconsciously ceded to his decision to leave her alone. Steve had spoken to her that morning, briefly, to tell her that Natasha was gone. Wanda barely reacted. After that, no one said a word to her until Vision eventually decided it was time.

 

He found her on the veranda, looking up at the stars. Her eyes were dry, but still raw from all that crying. She looked small. Lost in the enormity of the universe.

 

He waited, patiently, for her to realise he was there. Then she just looked at him, forlorn and defeated.

“How are you feeling now?” He asked, simply. Her shoulders slumped under the weight of the question.

“Like I have no right to be this miserable.” She admitted, at last.

“Perhaps it’s my particular ignorance of this subject, but I’m not sure that’s how human responses work” He reassured her, and she just smiled, sadly. “What are you thinking about?”

“My brother.” She answered quickly, as though it should have come as a surprise. “Or…” She trailed into a heavy silence, and this time Vision didn’t interrupt her.

 

“I couldn’t tell you about my brother. About us.” She went on, eventually. “You’d just have to know, what he meant to me, how close we were – not like other brothers and sisters. Not like anyone else. And, when he died… I can’t tell you, that pain. I felt like half of me had just been cut off, half of everything I was – and it never got any better. It still hurts just as much, I still miss him all the time. I still think, a thousand times a day, that there is no one on earth who knows me, who remembers me as a kid – it’s like our parents never existed. Like he never existed. Like I never existed, the person I was before…” She seemed to run out of air. “And yet, it doesn’t matter.”

“And why wouldn’t that matter?” Vision asked, genuinely.

“It’s true of everyone here. It’s nothing special.” She explained, and then she frowned and shook her head. Vision could see her struggling with the ideas, but he knew better than to try any help her. “I just… that isn’t an excuse for anything I’ve done, for what I’ve become. It has nothing to do with anything, now. But it’s still always there, and….” She sighed, defeated, “See, I don’t even know why I’m talking about him now. I don’t know why I’d be talking about him ever…”

 

But Vision just looked at her. He just waited.

 

“I just feel like… Like I stopped, then. I couldn’t be angry. I think I always knew that it was our fault, that I had no right to that, either. That I had no right to mope about losing him, when everyone had lost someone and no one else had done what I had. So I just… didn’t. I didn’t do anything instead, I just… stopped. I didn’t even think about Tony, I just left it as it was, I just…” Her eyes welled up again, and she had to pause to swallow the tears back. She took a breath, and spoke more slowly when she carried on “I wonder, sometimes, what would have happened if that bomb hadn’t hit our building. Or if we hadn’t found HYDRA, if we’d found something else instead. If Pietro hadn’t died. Any of it. I don’t mean that I blame those things – I mean, I really don’t know. What would she have been like, now? Who would I be, what am I even trying to get back to-” And her voice broke, and her tears got away from her in an instant.

 

Vision stepped over to her, then. He put his arms around her and let her sob onto his shoulder, holding her like that for a good few minutes while she cried, and cried. He held her like that until she cried herself out, until after she stopped sniffing and gulping for air. Finally, she looked up at him.

“I’m so sick of crying” She croaked, and Vision squeezed her shoulder affectionately.

“From the sounds of it, you have several years to catch up on” He said, and she managed a small smile.

“I don’t know why you like me” She whispered. Vision took a little step away from her so that he could look at her properly when he answered.

“Maybe it’s because I _can_ see the person you would have been. The one you’re looking for.”

“What does she look like?” Wanda sounded vulnerable. Like a child.

“Like someone with incredible capacity for love, and incredible capacity for pain, and incredible capacity for power. Someone with such potential that it’s undiminished, even by what you’ve been through. Potential I can see clearly, now.” He promised. Wanda took a deep, shuddering breath.

 

“I know you wish you could have seen Tony’s pain for yourself” Vision carried on, when Wanda couldn’t “But most great tales of redemption have, at their heart, an inciting incident. Most people are shown, in some way, what wasn’t clear before. Whether it is the advice of a friend, or the influence of a parent, of the insight of an alien artefact, the question is the same. What you do about it now. And I have no doubt you have it in you to be something wonderful. Because you already are.”

 

Wanda smiled at him, her breathing calmer now. And she went to say ‘who showed _you_?’. She was so comforted and amazed by that insight that she almost asked where it came from-

 

And then she remembered, she already knew. Tony Stark made Vision. This particular understanding of the human condition came from him.

 

So, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she let her head fall back against Visions chest and just let him hold her. And she thought, for the first time in a long time, _maybe tomorrow will be better._

 

**Sam and Shuri**

 

Sam had gone down to Shuri’s lab as soon as he’d finished breakfast. He was surprised when he got there, and found Shuri standing alone at her console.

“No Steve?” He asked immediately, still scanning the lab for him. But Shuri just smiled.

“He’ll be back in a minute” She reassured him. “He got a _phone call._ ” And she fixed Sam with a meaningful look, and watched him smile as he got it. _Ah. Tony._

 

“So, you aren’t waking him up right now, then?” Sam clarified. As excited as Steve was about things with Tony, Sam was sure he still wouldn’t have missed the big moment for a phone call.

“Oh, no” Shuri confirmed “The whole process will actually take several weeks. We’ll wake him up, to different degrees, several times before then.”

“So this time…?”

“In about an hour or so, he should regain consciousness for about a minute. That will be it for today. But it will allow the life support system to begin the transition to full independence, safely.”

 

Sam nodded, and thought about what Shuri had just told him. He’d been thinking, since long before all this happened, that he had to start taking responsibility for knowing these things himself. There was a difference between being loyal to someone and giving over all responsibility to them. It was the ‘unquestioning’ part of his unquestioning loyalty to Steve that had been a problem – not because he should have questioned Steve, but because he shouldn’t have been relying on Steve to question everything for him. Whatever happened after Bucky woke up properly, whatever the effect of Shuri’s proposed treatment program, Sam would at least be able to step in with a view of his own.

 

He spent a few minutes thinking of all the technical details he should ask about, all the underlying theories he really should understand… but looking at all of Shuri’s incredible equipment, a different question pushed its way to the front of his mind.

 

“Do you ever think about how no one will ever know about this?”

“You ask me that as a masked vigilante” Shuri reminded him, and Sam laughed.

“True. But then, I’m not sitting on something that could change the world.”

“Well, I don’t know if I agree with that, but I know what you mean” She conceded. “I do sometimes wonder if I’m in some way responsible for all the good things that could have happened elsewhere in the world, and didn’t. And there does seem something wasteful about it sometimes, yes.”

“Do you ever think, for yourself? Do you ever think that you would be the most renowned scientist on earth, if you’d been born somewhere else?”

“Ah, but would I?” Shuri mused “Perhaps, without Wakanda as it is, I wouldn’t have managed any of this. Maybe it’s better for it to exist, however few people it benefits, than to never exist at all. And, no, I don’t really think about who else knows my achievements. It’s enough that I know it, myself.”

 

Sam understood exactly what she meant. He wasn’t sure he could have expressed it as well as she had, but he lived it just the same. Sam had never given a thought to whether he was the hero in the story. He hadn’t even thought about where he stood, now that Tony was the boyfriend and the best friend was about to wake up. Because Sam had never cared about status or hierarchies either. How he looked and where he ranked had never mattered; only who he was and what he did. That would always be a work in progress, but at least he could be confident in the job he was doing. Who he was to Steve was what it was, regardless of anyone else. The right thing was the right thing, whether he was in the spotlight or just supporting the star. Being a hero wasn’t about being _the_ hero, every time.

 

When Steve reappeared, Sam was happy to see the shy smile he hadn’t quite managed to wipe from his face. Just that.

“How are we doing?” Steve asked, just a bit too breathless for the short walk from the corridor. Both Sam and Shuri tried not to grin too openly.

“I’ve just administered a mild adrenaline shot” Shuri explained, dumbing the process down a little “So, soon he will be conscious, although not aware. Mostly, today, I’ll be monitoring and adjusting his life support inputs.”

“So, he won’t know we’re here?”

“He might open his eyes, briefly, but no, he’s unlikely to see anything, and less likely to remember.” Shuri told him, and Steve nodded.

“I’d still like to go down there, if that’s okay”

“Of course” Shuri smiled, holding a hand out, _after you_. Steve knew where Bucky’s cryo-tank was.

 

So the three of them went down to stand next to an icy tank, Shuri to watch a process she’d seen a hundred times, Sam to watch Steve watch Bucky have no idea he was even there – because that’s what friends do, all round. The whole thing was routine enough that Shuri didn’t have to watch the numbers flashing up on the screens in her lab. Her systems would have alerted her to a problem, and she naturally assumed that was enough.

 

In fact, no one was standing in the lab when Bucky’s eyes finally fluttered, and the numbers started recording signs of life. No one had thought to monitor Shuri’s work desk, still cluttered with the debris of the alien invasion. None of it had seemed worth guarding. A few bits of the space ship, only there so that Shuri could analyse them. Notes from her research sessions with Tony, just waiting to be filed. A vibranium wrist band, now disconnected from the system, severed from Tony and decommissioned entirely.

 

No one was there to hear it when the wristband started beeping.  

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks for reading!
> 
> Shameless self promotion time... if you are enjoying this series, or have enjoyed any of my fics, please consider having a look at the Marvel Trumps Hate auction on tumblr. I'm one of the creators this year, which means for a $5 starting bid I will write a fic of any length, to order (full details on the creator page) better still, all money pledged goes to some great causes. 
> 
> https://mthofferings.tumblr.com/post/179237426136/wilma-kins-see-wilma-kinss-existing-works
> 
> Also endlessly grateful to anyone that shares that!
> 
> And thanks again!


End file.
